Blogging Shakespeare

This post is part of Year of Shakespeare, a project documenting the World Shakespeare Festival, the greatest celebration of Shakespeare the world has ever seen.   On 13 September twenty-five academics, theatre practitioners, educators, and students gathered in Stratford-upon-Avon at the Shakespeare Institute to discuss the World Shakespeare Festival and the summer of Shakespeare to which […]

This post is part of Year of Shakespeare, a project documenting the World Shakespeare Festival, the greatest celebration of Shakespeare the world has ever seen.   King Lear, directed by Michael Attenborough for the Almeida Theatre, 22 September 2012 By Sonia Massia, King’s College London Having sat through the first few minutes of Attenborough’s production of […]

On the evening of the 17th of November this year, the RSC will perform Redcrosse in Coventry Cathedral. Partly an original arts event, partly a groundbreaking religious service, Redcrosse evolves out of a project I led to evolve a new questing liturgy for England and St George. It was inspired by one of the great […]

Every new edition of a Shakespeare play brings with it fresh insights, the work is dressed anew for our own times by a scholarly introduction, notes, and different emphases. It was a great pleasure to welcome Professor Rene Weis of University College London to The Shakespeare Centre yesterday to speak on his new edition of […]

‘O Brave New World’ – Atmospheres of the Tempest A Retz production, www.retz.co.uk January to July 2012 297 Hoxton Street, London N1, Hoxton Gardens and the Grand Union Canal   Reviewed by Polly Mortimer   This fantastical production reached its audience on many levels – the physical space (a small deserted shop in Hoxton), which shapeshifted every month,  […]

This post is part of Year of Shakespeare, a project documenting the World Shakespeare Festival, the greatest celebration of Shakespeare the world has ever seen.   On 13 September twenty-five academics, theatre practitioners, educators, and students gathered in Stratford-upon-Avon at the Shakespeare Institute to discuss the World Shakespeare Festival and the summer of Shakespeare to which […]

As the recently unearthed remains of what might be Richard III undergo serious and extensive examination, the city of Leicester is taking the opportunity to draw in visitors. The display of materials from the dig in the suitably timber-framed Guildhall, Leicester’s oldest building, offers Richard III enthusiasts a way of feeling closer to the excavations […]

Language is a primary signifier of class and social status; Shakespeare employs linguistic nuance to draw out the relationships between characters in each play. In the postcolonial Indian context, the overlays of languages spoken are manifold, and equally signify class. Speaking English signifies upper and middle class education; it forms a crust over Hindi, the […]

This post is part of Year of Shakespeare, a project documenting the World Shakespeare Festival, the greatest celebration of Shakespeare the world has ever seen.   On 13 September twenty-five academics, theatre practitioners, educators, and students gathered in Stratford-upon-Avon at the Shakespeare Institute to discuss the World Shakespeare Festival and the summer of Shakespeare to which […]

“Shakespeare is a black woman.”   I came across these words written by Maya Angelou in Peter Erikson’s Rewriting Shakespeare Rewriting Ourselves and it plinged the spot in my brain that constantly whispers the question, “Why Shakespeare?”  Why is this claim made by a black woman? Why does a representative of the Reagan administration then […]